was old enough to drive, Lang is said to
have had ten new cars brought to her
school for her to choose among. One of
Lang's biographers, Robert Duffield, hav-
ing been commissioned to write a news-
paper article on Gina, then twenty-two, as
the "richest girl in Australia," found her in-
terested only in minerals. Gina "tries to be
nice to everybody," Duffield wrote. But "if
they disappoint her, or annoy her, or in
any way seem to threaten her, the friendly
filter on the opal-clear eyes drops to reveal
a more steely blue." While Gina was still
in her teens, her famously gruff father said,
"She's a lot tougher than me." Gina went
to the University of Sydney but lasted only
a year. She objected to the lectures of a
left-wing economics professor, found she
had nothing in common with her class-
mates, and returned to Perth and her life's
mission in what she called, with deadly
earnestness, the House of Hancock.
But Gina and her father began to
clash. She married twice, and had two
children with each husband. The first
was a young employee of the family
firm, whom Gina soon divorced. The
second was an American lawyer, Frank
Rinehart. He was thirty-seven years
older than Gina. According to "Gina
Rinehart: The Untold Story of the
Richest Woman in the World," a new
biography by Adele Ferguson, Frank
had been convicted of tax fraud in the
U.S. and disbarred. Lang thought that
he had his eye on Hancock Prospecting.
After Hope Hancock died, in 1983, and
Gina chose to contest her mother's will,
Lang saw Frank Rinehart's hand behind
the effort and was enraged. Worse, from
Gina's point of view, her father took up
with Rose Lacson, a young housekeeper
from the Philippines whom Gina had
hired. The Rineharts tried to get Lacson
deported. In an exchange of letters be-
tween father and daughter that later sur-
faced in court, Gina told Lang that he
had become a laughingstock. Lang bit-
terly asked Gina to "allow me to remem-
ber you as the neat, trim, capable and at-
tractive young lady" that she had been,
rather than "the slothful, vindictive and
devious baby elephant that you have be-
come." She was "grossly overweight," he
wrote. "I am glad your mother cannot
see you now." Hancock married Lacson
and built her a white-pillared water-
view mansion called Prix d'Amour.
They went on a round-the-world hon-
eymoon in his Learjet. Gina saw her in-
heritance being frittered away. Mean-
while, her father hurled himself into a
series of ill-advised business ventures,
including a failed barter deal with Nico-
lae Ceauşescu's Romania.
Frank Rinehart died in 1990, Lang
Hancock in 1992. Gina and her step-
mother fought in the courts over Han-
cock's estate for eleven years. Rinehart,
alleging that Rose was somehow respon-
sible for her father's death, eventually
forced an official inquest. A coroner
found, for a second time, that Lang had
died of natural causes. Meanwhile, Rine-
hart was found to have paid, through a
private investigator, up to two hundred
thousand dollars each to inquest wit-
nesses who offered testimony, much of it
dubious. There were allegations of adul-
tery, witchcraft, and attempted murder-
for-hire. Rinehart denied wrongdoing,
saying that the money had been for ex-
penses and protection, and the govern-
ment declined to press charges. If Rine-
hart had not loathed the press earlier,
she surely did before her battle with her
stepmother was over. The lurid charges
traded back and forth made great copy.
The long fight ended with Rose keeping
a few assets, including Prix d'Amour,
while Rinehart retained sole control of
Hancock Prospecting and its ever-in-
creasing royalty stream.
"YOU VS. GINA RINEHART," the ban-
ner headline reads on howrichare-
you.com.au. The site invites you to enter
your annual salary. If you enter sixty
thousand dollars, it informs you that
Rinehart makes that amount every 1.7
minutes. Below that, a rapidly increasing
number calculates how many hundreds of
thousands have "landed in Gina's pocket"
since you landed on this Web site. Fi-
nally, "Guess who made $107,703 sitting
on the toilet today?" Not you. Among the
things that her estimated 2011 income
"Hey---this is the quiet trail!"